Americans Akimbo
Americans Akimbo
'American Idiot,' 'Kimberly Akimbo,' 'A Girl Grows Wings,' 'Heading Into Night,' two classics, notes on eight new plays
Election fever is distracting me from other forms of theater.
Of course elections are about much more than theater. But in this final period before November 5, each campaign day provides fresh incidents that seem, well, theatrical — when I don my theater-critic’s hat.
One of the presidential candidates is best-known for his outlandish showmanship, at the expense of substance. Last weekend, this wealthy heir and convicted felon staged a cosplay in which he pretended to work at a McDonald’s, which was closed to its regular customers. In the late golfer Arnold Palmer’s home town, he publicly gushed over the size of Palmer’s previously private parts. These incidents followed the preceding week’s spectacle of the candidate’s 39-minute “baby toddler jumping dance” ( Jimmy Kimmel’s description) to “Ave Maria” and “YMCA” and other recordings on his list of faves, at what had been billed as a town hall.
Such antics create laughter on our national stage, but they also add menace — if they disguise the danger posed by this would-be “dictator” who told his former chief of staff John Kelly that “Hitler did some good things.”
Meanwhile the casting of the other major candidate creates dramatic contrast. She’s nearly two decades younger, a daughter of Indian and Jamaican immigrants, married to a Jewish Angeleno. She knows US law, having studied and practiced it before her election to the Senate and her vice presidency.
She also rose to the occasion in a gripping narrative. Most of us watched in real time, as her aged, diminished boss gave up his re-election quest so that his vice president could more effectively confront the aged, rapidly diminishing ex-president. Will this scenario conclude with the country’s first woman chief executive?
It sounds somewhat Shakespearean, although of course women didn’t appear on the stage back in the Bard’s day. Playwrights and screenwriters are probably preparing to write scripts about all of it once the election results are final.
But back to LA theater…and back to ‘Idiot’
The biggest openings in the last month were the “American Idiot” revival and LA’s first look at the “Kimberly Akimbo” musical. Both of them are adaptations of works from the first decade of this century, so they aren’t inherently about what’s happening today. Yet the staged version of Green Day’s “American Idiot,” at the Mark Taper Forum, had some potential to head in that direction.
But first, let’s breathe a sigh of relief that Center Theatre Group finally opened its first Taper season under its new artistic director Snehal Desai.
When the season was announced, I noted that CTG had previously presented a touring “American Idiot” (lyrics by Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong, “book” by Armstrong and Michael Mayer) at its larger Ahmanson Theatre in 2012. But Desai invited Deaf West Theatre to join his current staging, so now the major roles are double cast — signed as well as sung. Although I can’t judge the success of the signing, the move certainly succeeded in differentiating CTG’s two “American Idiot”s.
In Desai’s version, large surtitles bounce all over the Taper stage. They make the Green Day lyrics, from the original 2004 album, much more comprehensible than they were at the Ahmanson. They also add visual pizazz. At the same time, the aural cacophony doesn’t seem as loud as it did in the larger space — but perhaps that’s because this time I accepted and used the free earplugs that CTG offers playgoers. I’m not sure that option even occurred to me when I saw the Ahmanson version.
Still, I went into the Taper hoping that the threadbare narrative — mostly about three generically angry young white men — might have been strengthened, or at least updated to reflect changes in the past two decades. Except for using a Black actor as the signing (but not the singing) version of one of these roles, this didn’t happen.
That’s a bit puzzling, given that Green Day itself often reacts to current events. At a performance in 2019 and then again last New Year’s Eve, Green Day changed one lyric in the “American Idiot” title song from “I’m not a part of a redneck agenda” to “I’m not a part of a MAGA agenda.” But the original lyric is still intact in the Taper production. Also, in July, Armstrong held up a Trump mask with the word “IDIOT” written on it at a concert in Washington.
Not that CTG should necessarily adapt Green Day’s comments into the current production. Lawyers might argue that political advocacy could threaten CTG’s non-profit status. Did anyone, at Green Day or CTG, ever consider somehow indicating that perhaps one of these young men was pro-Trump in contrast to the other two? It’s not inconceivable, and in the current climate, it’s a choice that would be topical, as well as less vulnerable to charges of bias.
This “American Idiot” definitely needs something that would make it feel more like 2024 than 2004, when George W. Bush was busy with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Tunny, one of the three main characters in “Idiot,” returns home wounded from foreign combat. Far fewer Americans are being wounded or killed since those wars ended, so what exactly happened to Tunny?
‘Kimberly’ returns — with music
“Kimberly Akimbo,” the musical now at the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood, is based on David Lindsay-Abaire’s non-musical play, which first opened at Costa Mesa’s South Coast Repertory in 2001. I wrote the LA Times review of that premiere. I liked it. So did the voters in Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle, which gave Lindsay-Abaire a writing award. It later played Off-Broadway and in several other productions, including at least three in small LA theaters.
Two decades after that premiere, Lindsay-Abaire wrote not only the book but also the lyrics for a musical version of “Kimberly Akimbo,” with a score by Jeanine Tesori — whom Lindsay-Abaire has credited with the idea of turning the play into a musical. On Broadway, it won the Tony Awards for best musical and best original score in 2023.
Kimberly, a teenager in suburban New Jersey, has a rare disease (progeria, though it isn’t named) that causes her to age prematurely and rapidly. She knows she will die too soon. As she turns 16, she looks decades older. But she yearns to live as fully as possible in her remaining time, even as she faces the normal social stress of teenage life. Meanwhile, her mother is expecting another child. Spoiler alert — Kimberly is still alive as the play ends. No weepy deathbed scene is necessary to hold our attention.
It’s a small-scale musical, with a chorus of only four teenagers added to the original non-musical’s cast of five. I’m sorry to report that the 2700-seat Pantages, which is three times the size of the musical’s Broadway venue, isn’t an ideal venue for it, although those who have already listened to the score online will have an advantage over everyone else. From where I sat on the left side of the orchestra, the sound was blurry. Who knows what it was like from the top of the balcony?
I look forward to seeing it again in a smaller space. Actually, the larger stage at South Coast Repertory would be ideal, but unfortunately, it’s next door to Segerstrom Hall, which will present the current tour early next year — even though the Segerstrom has an even larger capacity than the Pantages. That probably eliminates the possibility that “Kimberly” the musical will return to the original home of “Kimberly” the play. But LA producers should start thinking about an LA venue in the 300-600-seat range where “Kimberly” the musical could eventually thrive.
‘A Girl Grows Wings’ — and encounters Encuentro
National Hispanic Heritage Month, September 15-October 15, perhaps had something to do with an unusual confluence of “Hispanic/Latino/Latina/Latinx/Latiné” theater in recent weeks (to borrow most of the title of one of those productions, now closed — Bernardo Cubría’s comedy “The Hispanic/Latino/Latina/Latinx/Latiné Vote” at the Theatricum Botanicum).
I saw four of these productions, but I’ll concentrate on the best — “A Girl Grows Wings,” from the Mexico City-based Organización Secreta Teatro, at Los Angeles Theatre Center’s Theatre 2 in downtown LA. The writer is Chicana playwright Marisela Treviño Orta, and the director is Secreta artistic director Rocío Carrillo.
This is a beautifully designed, scored and performed production about Mexican immigrants to the US and then, years later, their Dreamer daughter. Through most of it, a spell is cast using images, movement and instrumental music — but no spoken words. That technique finally begins to seem a bit too prolonged, but then suddenly we hear a cascade of angrily spoken protests as we approach the final moments.
These words connect more to the issues of the current election than anything in “American Idiot.” You’re probably aware of Donald Trump’s saber rattling about giving an order to round up and deport all undocumented immigrants ASAP, without any mention of the sky-high economic and human costs?
I’ve mentioned elsewhere that LATC’s Theatre 2 sometimes seems too sharply raked, but I’m quite sure that I was thinking about productions with plenty of spoken words. In “A Girl Grows Wings,” the height of the space is actually an asset, making room for this production’s magnificent design elements.
Latino Theater Company, which operates LATC, introduced “A Girl Grows Wings” as a prelude to its upcoming Encuentro, a festival running from today through November 10. It’s slated to include 19 productions (including additional performances of “A Girl Grows Wings”) in LATC’s four spaces. See the festival website for more information.
Speaking of virtually wordless shows, but on a much smaller scale, head over to “Heading Into Night,” at the Odyssey Theatre in West LA. Subtitled “a clown play about…forgetting,” this lively production suggests that forgetting has the benefit of making later experiences fresher, more surprising — remember Peter Allen’s phrase “everything old is new again”? This is almost but not quite a one-man show, starring co-deviser Daniel Passer — who is remarkably limber and nowhere close to dementia, although the “core inspiration” for the piece was De Hogeweyk, a Dutch dementia center. Passer also designed the sound. Co-deviser/director Beth Milles deserves ample applause.
The importance of being Earnest…and August
From LA County’s classics cluster in Pasadena and Glendale:
Gigi Bermingham’s Glendale staging of Oscar Wilde’s comedy “The Importance of Being Earnest” is my favorite Antaeus Theatre revival of a classic since the pandemic. She has nothing new to say about it, but who needs the new when the old is still so funny? In a play in which the two main characters are men, I was particularly struck by the razor-sharp performances of the women: Anne Gee Byrd, Julia Fletcher, Alessandra Mañon, and Jules Willcox.
Farther east, in Pasadena, A Noise Within has finally opened what is generally perceived as one of August Wilson’s best plays, “The Piano Lesson,” as part of its plan to present all of his plays. When I recently wrote about the company’s “King Hedley,” I questioned why the lesser plays were being produced first.
Now I’m wondering if “Piano Lesson” is as strong as I remember from several productions years ago. Like “Hedley,” Gregg T. Daniel’s revival lasts more than three hours and refers to a lot of unseen offstage events. I still find its central brother-sister conflict more dramatic and meaningful in a larger historical sense than the “King Hedley” narrative, but there is a lot of excess here — including too much time spent on ghostly visitations, although I will duly note that Halloween is approaching even sooner than Election Day. A new movie version of “The Piano Lesson” will appear on Netflix next month, clocking in at a mere 125 minutes. I’m curious to see what was shaved from it in order to achieve that running time.
Notes from the small-theater underground
David Rambo’s “A Good Guy,” in Rogue Machine’s tiny upstairs space at the Matrix on Melrose, is an engrossing depiction of the turmoil around a school shooting, although it doesn’t attempt to dramatize the actual event. The “good guy” is a female teacher (excellent Evangeline Edwards). Too bad the two supporting actors have to play so many roles.
A gun also is revealed in Shem Bitterman’s “The Civil Twilight,” in a new and even tinier space, Broadwater Studio Theatre, within the Broadwater complex in Hollywood. This one features sterling close-up performances by Taylor Gilbert and Andrew Elvis Miller, but the script goes at least one step beyond credibility.
While watching the US premiere of “I, Daniel Blake” at the Fountain, I began to think that this material would work better in a movie with authentic location shooting in northern England instead of this rather cramped little stage in LA. The program acknowledges that Dave Johns adapted it from a Ken Loach/Paul Laverty film. Then Charles McNulty’s subsequent review in the LA Times reported that the film is much better than the play. I also thought that Shayne Eastin’s “Electric, I” at Theatre of NOTE might work better as an essay or even as a book than as a play.
Strong productions with too much extraneous and sometimes confusing plotting: Matt Letscher’s “Demolition” at Pacific Resident Theatre, Keyanna Khatiblou’s “A Going Away Party Play” at Boston Court, Marlow Wyatt’s “Robbin, From the Hood” at the Road.
Finally, John Lavelle’s “The Very Best People,” an IAMA production in Atwater Village, is about young white male characters older but not necessarily wiser than those in “American Idiot,” even though some are cops or ex-cops. But its narrative has a very different problem — too much clutter. Also too much spatter.
At intermission, plastic ponchos are offered to patrons who want to avoid the chance that stage blood from the second-act violence might spritz onto their clothes. As I was in the second row, not the first, and because I try to avoid unnecessary use of plastics, I took my chances — and I regretted it. At home I had to attend to red spots on my shirt and pants. Most of them disappeared with rather rigorously scrubbed application of cold water. I might not have resented this postlude as much if the play had been better.